Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a medicine package inspection apparatus for inspecting whether or not accurate medicines have been packaged in medicine packages in a process of automatically packaging various medicines.
Description of the Related Art
According to the related art, a medicine automatic packaging machine receiving medicines from a plurality of cassette apparatuses in which each kind of medicines such as tablets, capsules, or the like, is accommodated and continuously packaging each dose of the medicines has been developed and used.
As the medicine automatic packaging machine according to the related art, a medicine automatic packaging machine including a plurality of cassette apparatuses disposed at an upper portion of a body and accommodating medicines such as tablets, capsules, or the like, having various sizes and shapes therein, a hopper disposed at a lower portion of the body and collecting the medicines discharged and dropping from the cassette apparatuses, a printing apparatus printing various information on a surface of packaging paper packaging the medicine, and a packaging apparatus packaging the medicines collected by the hopper using the packaging paper has been used.
It is required to inspect whether an accurate medicine has been packaged in each of medicine packages packaged by the medicine automatic packaging machine as described above. That is, since several ten to several hundred kinds of medicines are accommodated in the respective cassette apparatuses of the medicine automatic packaging machine and there is a risk that a medicine accident will occur in the case in which an inaccurate medicine is packaged, it should be necessarily inspected whether the accurate medicines are packaged in the medicine packages in which the medicines are packaged.
In addition, it should be necessarily inspected whether or not the medicines have been damaged due to a collision with a surface of the hopper, or the like, when the medicines are discharged and drop or whether or not medicines more than or less than a defined number of medicines have been packaged due to an error in a packaging operation.
According to the related art, as an apparatus for inspecting whether or not the medicine is normally packaged, an inspection apparatus including a camera photographing the medicine package in which the medicine is packaged and an image reading means determining whether or not the medicine is normally packaged through an image photographed by the camera has been known. These inspection apparatuses have been disclosed in the following patent references: Korean Patent No. 0591518; Korean Patent No. 0650285; and Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 10-162116.
However, Applicant believes there is a need to continuously improve the medicine package inspection apparatus so that the medicine package inspection apparatus may have a decreased volume and accurately convey a medicine package to be inspected and a user may easily control an inspection process and easily perform an inspection work.